#39: Saturday, 4 April, 2020.
Saturday, 4 April The Messiah Claims His Kingdom on Earth. Matt. 26:17–29
It would appear that Jesus celebrates the Passover might be a suitable heading for this section – if we were into headings. But wait! Think about that for a moment. Let’s review what the Passover meal was for the Jews.
The Passover was the meal celebrating the most important event in the life of Israel, ever.
The deliverance from slavery in Egypt was the defining moment for this nation. They were the chosen people. The promise of God to establish their nation had been given to Abraham, and re-affirmed with his son Isaac, and grandson Jacob. It was the children of Jacob who went down to live in Egypt during a severe famine. Over time, they lost their favoured position under Pharaoh and became enslaved for 400 years.
Moses was the man whom God chose to deliver them from slavery, to lead them out of Egypt through the desert to the Promised Land. This event was spoken of hundreds of times in the Old Testament books of law and psalms and prophecies. It formed the first words of the Ten Commandments: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me (Deut. 5:6).
On their final night in Egypt, after Pharaoh had reneged on all of his previous promises to let them go, God had warned of one last dreadful plague that all of the firstborn in the land would die – cattle and human. Read the story in Exodus 11&12.
Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, "Go, select lambs for your families, and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood in the basin. None of you shall go outside the door of your house until morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike down the Egyptians; when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over that door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you down.
You shall observe this rite as a perpetual ordinance for you and your children. When you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this observance. And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this observance?' you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for he passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt, when he struck down the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” And the people bowed down and worshiped. (Ex. 12:21–27)
The Passover celebrated the salvation of the nation of Israel by the annual blood sacrifice of a lamb, offered by each and every family. It was only by sheltering under the actual blood of the lamb that the angel of death passed over their households in Egypt. The people of Israel had celebrated this festival of Passover for generations in remembrance of this deliverance.
But now, of course, we know that Jesus did not merely celebrate the Passover with his disciples on that night. He was / is the Passover lamb. He is the one to whom all Passovers were looking forward. He was the last Passover Lamb that ever needed to be sacrificed.
From that first Passover night in Egypt, thousands of years earlier, the parable-promise being acted out was this: I will deliver the whole world from its slavery into the joyful freedom of my kingdom, by the blood of the sacrificial lamb.
Of all nights, Passover was the most important night of the Jewish calendar. And of all Passover nights, this was the most important ever – because it fulfilled, completed all the others. At the same time, it effectively put an end to – or at least redefined – all future Passover nights. A Christian Jew might still celebrate Passover as a national event, but it would have gained a new and wider spiritual meaning.
On this night, Jesus re-wrote both the rubric and the text. (The rubric is, literally, the red writing, (rubric – red ochre) the little headings that we have in a prayer-book, giving instructions on what to do next.)
No longer does the father of the family ask the children: What is this bread? What is this wine? Now the minister says: This is the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the blood of the Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world.
This night also draws to our memory another Old Testament event.
The first priest mentioned in the Bible was not even a Jew. He was the mysterious character called Melchizedek (Gen. 14:18–20). He was not only the priest of God Most High (El Elyon, in Hebrew), but also a King. This combined role was very unusual in all the ancient cultures. Melchizedek was priest of the Most High God andthe King of Salem. Salem (shalom) means peace, so this man was the King of that locality which later would become the City of Peace, Jeru-salem.
When Abram (later to be called Abraham) met with Melchizedek, the Priest-King offered Abram an offering of bread and wine, and then bestowed on him a blessing. Perhaps this meeting occurred even at the same place where Abraham later offered his son Isaac on Mt Moriah, which was the later site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, but we are not told this. It was immediately after this event that God made the covenant with Abram, changing his name and establishing the future nation of Israel with a promise made in blood.
Jesus tells his disciples in v29: I tell you I will never again drink of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.
You and I drink that wine, that blood, each time we celebrate the Eucharist – that great thanksgiving sacrificial meal where the body and blood of the Lamb of God is given for us all over again.
So now the King has claimed Jerusalem. He has claimed the Temple. He has claimed the people of God. He has claimed the Grand Narrative of the Wedding Banquet of God with Israel. Now he has claimed the most important Festival of the Jewish nation. There is just one more element to claim.
Prayer: Dear Father, as I read and think about the careful steps which your Son took in the claiming of His Kingdom, I am in awe. You are truly the Master Agent of human history – history which is ultimately the story of God’s Search for Man, as Rabbi Abraham Herschel wrote. I thank you for the Eucharistic feast, for the freedom that you wrought for me at Calvary. Amen.